


your shadow follows

by enaxii



Series: Sheith Angst Week 2018 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Completely unedited, M/M, Sheith Angst Week 2018, i did not try, im so sorry, this is a good prompt tho i might come back to rewrite this some day, tired...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 15:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15821301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enaxii/pseuds/enaxii
Summary: Prompt: burn //hallucinationsTwo times Keith sees Shiro, and he isn't there.





	your shadow follows

It happens to Keith on two different occasions.

The first time, he’s in the desert, heating rolling across the sand that almost seems liquid. Keith’s throat is parched and sand whips him across the face, stinging his cheeks. He squints his eyes against the sun, and something catches his eye in the corner of his vision.

A tuft of hair, black, as it flows in the wind.

“Shi...ro?”

He can’t move his tongue right and it feel too thick in his mouth. When Keith turns, he sees a grey officer uniform, fluttering. His smile is as blinding as the sun, and even though his edges waver, there’s no mistaking it.

It’s Shiro.

Keith’s heart thumps, painfully, and he stumbles forward through the sand.

“Shiro! Shiro, wait-”

The officer laughs, and beckons with his hand.

_ “Come with me, Keith.” _

The words are snatches of the wind, eerie in how it echoes, like they’re in a closed room instead of an open desert.

_ “Come with me.” _

Shiro begins to back away, edges wavering as the sand whips around them, and Keith tries to urge his legs to move faster. They remain dumb in the sand, dragging through a solid ocean and he stretches his arm out, trying to catch Shiro.

Shiro wavers in the sands, and then he dissipates. His words whirl around him, a tsunami that pounds on his head.

_ “Come find me, Keith.” _

The sand swirls, and Keith collapses to his knees, hand still outstretched. The sand bites at his knees, and when the sand settles, Keith finds himself back in front of his little shack in the desert.

Shiro is gone, and there’s a gnawing in Keith’s chest like a part of him is gone, too.

Something, some  _ energy _ hums at the back of his mind.

_ Come find me, and you  _ will  _ find Shiro. _

(“I can't explain it, really. After getting booted from the Garrison, I was kind of lost and found myself drawn out to this place. It's like something... some energy, was telling me to search.”)

\---

He finds Shiro, Voltron, and a war. They don’t have much time to talk, just quick glances and shoulder touches and the galra come. They don’t have time, because war doesn’t wait for anyone, and by the time they find time, Shiro’s gone.

Keith spends weeks, months, combing through the wreckage left at where Central Command had been. The debris field is huge, but eventually he runs out of room to search and room to hope.

He turns away from the ruins and start hunting the galra instead. But even as they comb ship after ship after ship, nothing shows up about Shiro. They’re all dead ends, and Keith feels himself starting to fall apart, again.

\---

The second time it happens, Keith’s just stumbling out of the medical bay after a very disastrous fight. They’re reminded, bluntly, that they can’t form Voltron because there’s no one to fly the Black Lion anymore.

Keith refuses to get into the healing pod, ignores all the concerned glances his teammates send his way, and heaves himself out of the door.

His footsteps are unsteady, and Keith leans on the wall as he waits for the world to stop spinning.

There’s a flicker in the corner of his eye.

Keith’s bayard is out instantly, sword manifested, even as his hands shake from the effort of keeping them steady.

“Who’s there?!”

His voice echoes in the empty corridor of the ship.

_ “Keith…” _

Keith’s sword dips, and then disappears, bayard clattering to the floor. He can’t do anything more than whisper, voice hoarse.

“Shiro…?”

This whole thing is eerily similar to that day in the desert, when the sun beat him down and Keith thought that he might die.

He spins on his heel in a full circle, trying to locate where the voice came from. Everytime, he can barely catch an outline that disappears the moment Keith tries to focus on it.

It’s like trying to see an  _ illusion _ .

Eventually, Keith stills, and he can  _ sense _ the purple in his peripheral. He sees the hair, the arm, the armour, black tinged with purple.

“Shiro?”

Keith repeats himself, softer, and he sees the outline tilt his head, upset, almost.

_ “I’m not here, Keith.” _

He knows that. He knows that, just as he knows that the Shiro he saw that day in the desert was a mirage, just as he knows that Shiro was taken by the galra because he’s  _ not dead _ .

“I won’t give up on you, Shiro. I will find you.”

The hallucination seems to shrink, exhale and take himself to pieces.

_ “You need to give up, Keith. Move on. I’m  _ dead. _ ” _

The world falls beneath his feet, and ice coats his tongue this time, even as he feels the desert heat smothering him.

_ “I have to go now, Keith.” _

“What? No.  _ No. _ Shiro-”

Keith turns to face the shadow, desperate, reaching, reaching, Shiro’s name pushing out of his lips and into the still air.

There’s no one else in the room.

Purple shimmers in the air, before it’s gone, just like Shiro.

(And he’s alone, again.)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really sorry bout the quality of this fic. just couldn't get my words to flow right, and the day's almost up :(  
> find me on my [tumblr](https://enaxii.tumblr.com/)!


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